


Traffic Signs

by Gazyrlezon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Post-Nuclear War, Tumblr Prompt, and begged to be written down, just an idea that came to mind, writing prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 19:45:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10928778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gazyrlezon/pseuds/Gazyrlezon
Summary: As Alex grew up, she came to realize there were some unspoken rules around
her, rules that, unlike most others, just didn’t seem to fit. Rules that weren’t
things likedon’t eat anything you find by the wayside, orbeware of strangers.
Those she could understand. A plant might be poison, an stranger have a gun
concealed, just waiting to shoot and rob your corpse. Those seemed sensible,
and good advice.But others justweren’t, and people would even admit it
openly and still insist they were important.





	Traffic Signs

**Author's Note:**

> I've also posted this [on tumblr](https://gazyrlezon.tumblr.com/post/160762700172/writing-prompt-s-its-funny-how-people-still-obey). The prompt was "It’s funny how people still obey traffic signs, even after a nuclear apocalypse."

As Alex grew up, she came to realize there were some unspoken rules around her, rules that, unlike most others, just didn’t seem to fit. Rules that weren’t things like _don’t eat anything you find by the wayside_ , or _beware of strangers_. Those she could understand. A plant might be poison, an stranger have a gun concealed, just waiting to shoot and rob your corpse. Those seemed sensible, and good advice. 

But others just _weren’t_ , and people would even admit it openly and still insist they were important. 

She’d spent hours of her free time discussing them with Matt, the only other kid she knew, back in her home village, the one who’d used to sleep just next to her, beneath that ragged, cracked-open roof presenting them with a brilliant, untainted sky at night, under which they’d talk, because there wasn’t time for talk during the days. He’d died of the creeping sickness years ago, first loosing hairs then skin then life, but she still remembered his face as clearly as if she’d seen him just yesterday, no matter how much time had passed, no matter how much distance she’d covered with her father on this ever-continuing road. 

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”, he said, “Probably something from _before_. You never noticed that only the old ones do that?” 

She hadn’t, but actually it was true, once she thought about it. The old ones sometimes just acted weird, did things that made no sense. She’d used to wonder why that was. 

Probably Matt had been right, she reflected. Some things in this world she lived in didn’t really fit, because they weren’t from her world; they were leftovers from _before_ , from that strange world of billions of people and free food that was save to eat, from that land free of sorrows. The one the old ones always talked about. Though in a way, the old ones themselves didn’t fit in, either. 

_Old ones_. People left over, from _before_. 

Almost all her life, Alex had wondered what had happened to the _before_ , had pestered her father with a hundred thousand questions about it though she knew he’d never answer them. Rumour had it that it was a land of wonders, of carefreeness and unending happiness. And while her father would never talk about it, others would gladly enough. Matt’s mother had told stories when she’d still lived, and after that they’d often made their way to the old crone living down the way, much closer towards the edge of the monolithic rubble-pile that the old ones called a _city, or what’s left of it_. The old womand would fill in details in return for food (they didn’t have much of it, but letting her starve seemed wrong in any case, and if they got stories out of it, so much the better). She also said that actually it hadn’t been quite as good as everybody claimed that it had been, but people just liked to cling to it, to that idea of a better world, and so they’d lie a bit about it to themselves. Still, she agreed that life had been much easier back then; at least you’d be sure you wouldn’t die of the Creeping. Matt and Alex had always tried to get her to admit that the billions of people were a lie — only a fool, after all, would believe so many could live in a world all at once — but she remained steady on that; in fact, that cursed overgrown black stone-quarry there had once housed _millions_ , or so she’d claimed. 

After that, they’d counted how many people they knew between them, and came up with barely under a hundred. And that was counting the few travellers that came through sometimes, in search of life and work. 

Another curious thing was that apparently even the old ones had all (or at least most of them) once had hair. It seemed only logical — the taint of the creeping sickness clung to all of them, and when it was creeping over you, you’d loose your hair, simple as that — but it still seemed hard to imagine. 

So after some time, Alex no longer wondered why people would waste fuel stopping at mostly-imagined places called _crossings_ , would stop to take a look at the faded signs everywhere. They’d stop in front of those that said _STOP_ on them almost without fail (and if someone didn’t it was normally a sign of robbers or worse), and when asked why then they’d answer things like _old habits._ Only Alex was by now fourteen years old, so whenever _before_ had been, they’d had at least fourteen years for adjusting and relearning, so she doubted it was just habit. 

Maybe, as the old crone had said, people just liked to cling to things. 

Things like fuel (the old ones still preferred it, though none could explain why — much easier and less dangerous to get the scrap parts for an electronic windmill which would give you endless power, even if stretched out over time, then do the shadowy deals required to acquire fuel), or just the banality of _traffic signs_ (which was what the old ones called the metal plates at the wayside). The jokes, too, about zombies and how they’d come to get you, which Alex had never understood. What was so funny these that they were used in conversation all the time, as if they’d had some significance in the _before_? She could only wonder. 

Every year, one or two of the old ones would crawl into the overgrown hellhole that had once been a _city_. Few would come back out again; the sickness had festered in these places long ago, the way it had in the white towers (though many of these were more grey than white these days), or what was left of them. Still, the people would go there all the same. 

People died of the Creeping. A simple fact of life, and yet they couldn’t seem accept it. 

And, she came to suspect, she didn’t either. It had been years since Matt had died of it, since he’d one day woken up to find that if he ran his hands through his hair it would come off in big, thick strands, and yet she thought of him most every day. He’d just been a boy who’d probably climbed on the wrong pile of stones, looked into the wrong tube underground in search of life to find death instead. The creeping demons were invisible; one couldn’t sense them except with complicated machinery that would go _tick-tick_ if one was near, but those were hard to find and even harder to build. So sometimes people were just crept away. 

But life stretched on, the same way the way in front of her did. Her father was lying in the back, she was driving (they rotated on that; he’d do half a day, and she the other half). Life on the road was different from life in the community of the village, but they hadn’t been able to stay there after the nearby white tower had fallen, and the sickness began to creep out. 

A _traffic sign_ came up ahead. Alex’s hands hovered over the controls for a moment, then slowed their car down and stopped it entirely just in front of the sign. Only for a moment, though, then she drove on. 

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll do more prompt writes in the future; I'm trying to get back to writing and notice I'm really out of practice …


End file.
